Well, this is sure to raise a few eyebrows here and there. Today, at the Ubuntu Developer Summit, Mark Shuttleworth held his keynote speech, and in it, he announced that Ubuntu will switch to the Unity user interface come release, for both the netbook as well as the desktop, leaving the GNOME user interface behind (but keeping the GNOME platform).

I've tried out Unity for a few days now, and I've come to love the concept and design. Sure, it's still a bit buggy (like the overlay gets buggy, and suspension issues, and when changing themes, when a window is maximized it still has Ambiance theme buttons and all it still has the sluggish performance) it needs lots of work done, but I can see each release getting better.

You are exactly right. Its currently good, but need that final polish. This is something I think Ubuntu will now give it as it has put its (open) dev muscle behind it.

Its interesting that the windows 95/Mac os7 GUI layout is only now starting to be replaced. Users are FAR more open to different GUIs (assuming they are intuitive) than anytime in the last decade. In large part I think this is thanks to smartphones.